Interview with Lee F. Browne - Caltech Oral Histories

Browne–6
then we’d make wine. We’d get dandelions and yeast and put them into a crock and then she’d
put some hot water in there and she’d say, “Now, Lee Junior, put your feet in there. Put your
feet down in there.” I’d say, “What’s that for?” “Well, you got some stuff between your toes
that will make this stuff work.” I’d say, “What do you mean ‘work’?” She’d say, “Well, it’s
going to bubble.” She meant “ferment.”
COHEN: Of course, of course.
BROWNE: She was talking about the Krebs cycle, but she didn’t know a thing about the Krebs
cycle.
COHEN: But they did know to tell you that you had to go to college.
BROWNE: That’s right. You had to go to college if you wanted to get answers to these
questions.
COHEN: Yes.
BROWNE: Then after that, in about October or May, you’d hear something rattling in the back
room. It would be the tops on those crocks where that wine was jumping up and down because
the CO 2 was coming out. You’d get a toothache and she’d make you take a swallow and move it
around in your mouth and then swallow it, and then you’d get drunk and you’d go to sleep.
[Laughter] So you had a toothache no more. There was just a whole series of things like that.
COHEN: But you were an only child all this time.
BROWNE: That’s right, because my aunt had had two children that died. And therefore I was the
center of attention for these adults as far as anybody growing up was concerned. The man she
married would take me to the Welch Furniture Company, where he made dressers. You know,
the dressers people dress in front of and put mirrors in?
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